You probably never heard of my but anyway. I'm interested in this competition, especially for the possibility to tie the map with the original story arc and free theme (well - relatively free, there are still rules and guidelines to follow but you get my point, no things like "the must map have x number of puzzles and this particular setting").

For now the map will be called "The Eagle of Steel". I have a thing for birds and the meaning of it will become clear once the map is finished (assuming I will finish it in time). It's still a working title though.

Of course there are plenty of spoilers and details about gameplay here, so beware!

The idea is that after the teleportation incident at Kleiner's lab early in the Half-Life 2 storyline, it turns out that the G-Man wants to test Gordon before allowing him to proceed in his main assignment in City 17. He faced "objections" in regards to the employment of Freeman and he wants to prove that he is perfectly capable of handling anything being thrown at him. And what better way to prove that than messing around with Kleiner's teleporter to send him deep into the wasteland, among the now dried seabeds, in one of the most hostile places on Earth after the Seven Hour War?

The player will start in a desert, where the oceans used to be before the Combine invasion, near a Combine facility that sucks in the remaining seawater and converts it into energy that is then sent to some kind of command center up in the sky through a laser array. This command center contains a prototype fast aicraft that the player will have to steal in order to leave the area and return to City 17. This vehicle is going to be his final objective and will be shown at the beginning of the map thanks to a pair of combine binoculars as seen in Highway 17. The idea would be to have a complex take-off sequence at the end of the map where the aircraft is pulled at the end of some kind of rail system, similar to "rocket sled" concepts proposed as a means to reach orbit from Earth.

As you can probably guess, the airbone command center does not obey to conventional laws of physics thanks to Combine-y technology (don't ask - it's the same reason why the Citadel can be over 2 Km high without suffering from structural problems). When thinking of its appearance, I was inspired by the high-altitude houses seen in Oblivion, they look pretty cool and gameplay-wise they provide the player with a way to board them (via the long metal pylons that anchor them to the ground). The command center would be anchored to the ground with a similar pylon, that the player will have to climb (HL1-style jumping puzzles anyone?) to get on board - of course, while Oblivion's houses are suspended at a height of several kilometers, the altitude of this facility will be much more modest. Once there, he will face combine troops and citadel-style puzzles alike (don't worry though, I have no plans to make any straight copypastes, both in terms of visuals and gameplay) while he attempts to reach the aircraft.

I hope I can get some pretty visuals out of the command center, both from aboard it and from the ground. Right now I have no map material to show off as I'm mainly working on paper concepts, gameplay ideas and story (as you can probably see from how much I've written already). Hopefully in 3-4 days I should be able to post a few ingame images. This first post will also serve as my guideline and style/gameplay reference for making the map.